Friday Reads: Light the Dark

Joe Fassler has a great job. He has a regular series in The Atlantic called “Be Heart” where he interviews well-known writers about their favourite passage from literature and puts their thoughts together into an essay. In this recent article, Joe said: “In part, I thought that the series would force me to publish regularly (and the extra income wouldn’t hurt). But mostly, I was looking to ask questions I wanted to answer badly for myself. What inspires you? I wanted to query my favourite writers. Where do your best ideas come from? And how do you possibly manage to turn those flashes of insight into something crystalline and whole?” Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artistic Process is a collection based on his series. Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amy Tan, and Neil Gaiman are all part of this collection, as are a number of authors I’ve never heard of. If you enjoy Joe Fassler’s “By Heart” series, you’ll definitely want to pick up a copy of Light the Dark.